


Happier

by cestmabiologie



Category: Castle Rock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post-Season/Series 01 Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-08-03 05:09:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16319741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cestmabiologie/pseuds/cestmabiologie
Summary: Molly deals with living away from Castle Rock.





	Happier

**Author's Note:**

> I love one (1) empath.

Molly thought the emptiness of her grandmother would be a relief. It just made her feel hollow. 

She’d spent a lifetime carving out space inside herself for everyone else’s emotions. Now that they were gone, her own feelings weren’t big enough.

“You know when someone’s left a TV on but the screen’s black so it  _ looks _ like it’s turned off? You can just hear this humming and that’s the only way you know. That’s how I feel all the time.”

“You’re just bored,” her sister told her over the phone, but that wasn’t it. Her sister was fine. Everyone back home was fine. Nothing bad had happened in Castle Rock since they day Henry’d told her to drive away and never come back. Still, some of the town’s feelings came through the line. Molly took it in small sips every time her sister called. 

She hated to admit it, but it gave her a rush to feel it. At least there wasn’t anyone around here she could admit it to. Still, she couldn’t help feeling shame when her heart beat a little faster everytime the phone rang because it might be someone calling from home. 

Henry never called, not even to find out where she’d ended up. Of all of her puny feelings, the ones that Henry’d left her with took up more space and hummed louder. But her sister said he was fine. Even Jackie said he was fine. She shouldn’t worry about Henry.

“Besides,” Jackie pointed out, her voice distant on a speakerphone, “It’s not like you’ve ever called him.”

Molly had pulled up Henry’s number more than once, but she’d never gone through with it. Henry was fine. If he was happy, he was happier without her there to siphon his thoughts and constantly bring up their past.

If he was happy, she could be happy, too.

After all, she’d thought she was happy when she’d first gotten to this neighbourhood. Lights weren’t too bright anymore and being around other people wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle. She’d actually gone through a cold sweat withdrawal hell by accident because she’d hadn’t needed to reach for her pills. She left her sunglasses at home.

The only echoes were nightmares, and even those weren’t so bad. More like bad dreams, really. She dreamed her hands gripped around cold metal bars, but she couldn’t tell which side she was on. She dreamed that she was in the forest where she’d died. All the sound was gone. There was no wind and no birdsong. The leaves made no noise under her feet. There was no humming.

She would wake up with a sharp pain in her back. It was from sleeping on her grandmother’s old mattress, she’d told herself, and not a phantom bullet from a life she’d never lived. She wasn’t dead. That was a version of Molly Strand that some kid had made up. That Molly Strand probably never existed.

This Molly Strand lived in a safe neighbourhood now. She was good at her job. She was happier than any made-up Molly Strand could be. Especially since that Molly bled out. 

She picked up her phone. She could call Henry. She could ask him about his day and how his son’s doing in school. She could tell him she’s sorry about his mother and explain that she found out too late to come up for the funeral. She could ask him if he’d started packing things into boxes and if he’d found anything from their childhood. These were things normal, happy people could talk about.

She waited for him to pick up. She imagined herself reaching through her phone towards home.

“Hello?”

It was Henry’s voice, but there was something more. It wasn’t the hum, it was static cranked to full volume, angry and incoherent. It was awful and pressed against her lungs from inside her chest.

“Hello?”

Blackness tugged at the edges of her vision. She sank slowly onto the sofa and turned out the lamp. Darkness thickened and she caught her breath.

“Henry? It’s Molly.”

There was a pause and a shift in the static that she couldn’t interpret.

“Molly?”

His voice cut clear and strong through the noise. She peeled her tongue from her palate. She hadn’t realized she’d been clenching her teeth. 

“I’m coming back.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed!


End file.
